GATE OPENS
He has little things that isn't right. He isn't wide enough there.
His head should be a bit wider.
And he has a slight discolouration there, which isn't a good thing.
And where his hair's thinned,
where it's just a bit baldy there, that shouldn't be.
It should be full. He should keep it.
And it should be a bit wider there. And it should be a bit shorter hair.
And these horns are a bit wide.
Some people like them with a lot of colour round their eyes
and a big bump of white on the nose.
And other people like them like this one,
where there's just a little bit, and the colour's well down.
It's supposed to be nice and round there, and full.
The idea is to make him look like he's got a longer leg, so that when
he goes to a sale, he looks like he's going to grow into a big...
a great big stretchy tup that somebody might want to have
progeny off.
It's just to enhance his bits so that he looks
the best he possibly can.
Same as a woman putting make-up on in the morning.
She doesn't do it because she thinks it's going to make her look worse.
She's going to look better. That's the theory, anyway.
Some of them aren't very successful.
Same with the tups.
Sometimes you aren't very successful at making them look more attractive.
They just look worse.
We were just discussing in the pub the other day that
Swaledale sheep are one of the worst addictions known to man.
You just keep coming back and you keep having a go
and you keep getting a right kick in the nuts!
But then, next day, you stand up and you have a look at next year's
sheep and you think, "Oh, well, this may be one of next year's."
Never wanted to do anything else, really.
His parents weren't farmers, but his grandfather was a farmer
and that's where he kind of spent most of his holidays and that.
All spare time. Yeah. So it became a nasty addiction, a nasty habit.
MOOING
He loves every minute, really! Yes. He just...
MOOING
He's a typical grumpy old farmer. Yeah.
Which was an ambition in life, obviously, from day one!
Which he's fulfilling quite well! Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, well, it was always an ambition to get
a gnarly old farmer's wife! You've got that.
HE CHUCKLES
Are you ready?
HE WHISTLES
Get down! Get down! Get down!
HE WHISTLES
Lie down.
This way.
Going to Cocklake, a barn of ours,
over the field - a few fields.
And we're going to get some hay,
or a silage.
LAMBS BLEAT
SPEECH DROWNED BY ENGINE
These are our tups,
and the tups are like boys.
They...um,
they mate the girls
and make them have lambs.
And you keep them to breed your own
lambs. Some more tups,
or...and girl - yows.
Or some of them you put in a fat.
For people to eat.
You identify your yows and tups
by the tag.
Normally.
And sometimes, sometimes you can remember who they are,
what they're from, who sired them and who damned them
by how they look.
But I can't.
And you've got certain yows that you want to put to a certain tup,
so you put them in the same field without another tup in,
or else the tup that you want to tup some, it'll tup the ones
that you want to tup the other - the other tup to tup.
And it will make a bad mixture.
So, they'll have wide horns or something like that.
Or black feet.
My father always... He left farming and became a policeman,
but he always used to buy a young male,
a lamb...of this type,
keep it for a year and then try to sell it on as a profit.
So, I've always had that, we've always done that,
so that just kept the enthusiasm there.
Then, when we got chance, we bought ten yows and, then, when we got
chance for a few more yows, we bought more yows,
and just, generally, it's kept going.
I like this farm. I like living here.
It's nice when it snows,
because you see all the little, like...
snowflakes coming down really fast, twirling around.
I might not be a farmer when I'm older.
I might just keep, like, horses
and do artwork and stuff.
Because I'm into art.
I sometimes go in the house and play,
because the...kind of, you get in the way sometimes,
with cows, because they kick.
And yeah. So, you get in the way a bit.
You get in the way a bit. But not a lot.
We just get shouted at a little bit, but it's not much.
I don't really want to be a farmer because...
you have to pay staff,
you have to work on the farm,
muck up the sloppy, sloppy poo.
Not nice.
I think they should, um,
pick it up theirselves instead of us.
SHE WHISPERS TO HORSE
Horrible, isn't it? What?
Weather.
Yep.
Right. Come on, then, Mummy will go and have a sledge.
Good! Yay!
Woohoo! Woo! Woohoo!
Right.
Go!
THEY SQUEAL
THEY LAUGH AND CHEER
DOG BARKS Maggie!
MUTTERED CONVERSATION
No, because this is mine. It was sharper.
TELEVISION IN BACKGROUND
So, we take the feet off.
There's the legs gone.
Hmm? There's the legs gone.
The feet. The feet.
We eat most of our own meat.
It's even better when you know what sort of life it's had,
it's had a very nice life.
You know what you've fed it, you know everything about its history.
Now you can pull.
The... Feed bag out.
The windpipe and the feed sack out.
OK? All done. It's Thursday tomorrow.
THEY SHOUT
Hey! Come here! Oi, get off!
Ow, you stood on me foot! Right, nice straight line. Shoulders.
All I want to see is a line of shoulders.
And in we go.
# There is a green hill far away
# Outside a city wall
# Where Christ our Lord was crucified
# Who died to save us all... #
Morning. Morning.
Yeah, well. I'm going to ask you a few questions.
I think I know the answer to this,
but put your hands up if your parents are farmers.
Right. Good.
How many of you like living where you live,
and like living on a farm?
Right. Tom.
You can, like, go and...like,
see if any, like, sheep have staggers or something.
Just on your quad bike.
Luke? Nature.
The nature is brilliant around here. Right.
And then you get to...
have animals for money.
You mean you sell them? Yeah. Once you've reared them? Yeah.
When I get back from school, I always put...get in my wellies
and go and check the hens, see how many eggs we've got and feed them.
You've got a free life. Mm-hmm. You don't have any neighbours, what you,
what you have to be quiet and you have to annoy them.
You can just scream your house down or anything, because you're
not, like, next door to them and you can just run about and be a maniac.
And is there anything you don't like about living where you live?
No.
Two.
Right. That's the lamb there, the body.
That's its head. The white circle.
And another body there and another head there.
Two in her.
SPEECH DROWNED BY NOISE
Yeah. No, fine. Don't see very much of them. No?
Well, we didn't sleep last night, John.
I don't want to know, Kay. No, not like that!
THEY LAUGH
Worrying about today.
Three. Trust you!
It's hard work, mentally, you know,
if you're scanning 2,000 sheep every day.
Um...you need...
good concentration levels.
So, today, I'm doing eight jobs, I think, today.
Seven in Teesdale and one over in Weardale, this afternoon.
So, yeah.
Three quarters of the way through this season now,
so looking forward to the end.
Then I go back to lamb my own sheep.
'Main income. Yeah.'
Two. Two. Two and seven.
'So, it's meant we can do what we want on the farm.'
Also give three kids a good education.
And keep my wife in a manner to which she's become accustomed.
OK? Yep.
It's done, just purely and simply to give John some money. Two.
It's the upland farmer looking after the lowland farmer. Yeah!
No, no, no. No? Who said two?
Nobody? No. THEY LAUGH
Sorry, John!
You wouldn't want your percentage to be wrong. No.
Right? Yeah, that's the job lot done.
There you go. Thank you.
Two so far.
I better go and pick up the kids from school.
I've got some very exciting news. What? We've been scanning today.
And your two yows... Yeah?
They're both having twins! Aww!
So you're going to have four lambs this year! Yay!
Well, I've already got... Two gimmer lambs, haven't you?
Wow! And two yows.
Tenancy was the only way, really, that Tom
and I could get into farming.
Obviously, we can't afford to buy our own farm,
so tenancy is the only way we can go into it,
so you get your farm for a certain length of time and, for that
length of time, you invest and make the best job that you can do.
From a day-to-day point of view,
it really is the same as owning the farm.
You know, you do things which you think's going to work
the best for your own farm. We're on a very good estate,
who do leave you alone to a greater or lesser extent
and don't stipulate too many things. As long as you're
paying your rent, they're sort of happy to leave you to it.
As far as we know.
Scott! Scott!
SHE CALLS DOG
SHE BAAS LIKE A SHEEP
Scott!
Away! Lie down!
Come by! Come by!
Get up! Get up!
Get up!
Come by!
Get up!
Get up! Come by!
Lie down.
SHE BAAS LIKE A SHEEP
No. SHE MUMBLES
SHEEP SQUEALS
HE STRUGGLES
HE GROANS
It's just the water. Did you want a bit of Fairy liquid in it?
I sent Hetty to get it.
Hetty!
Come on!
Right, stand back, now.
Do you want her down or...? Yeah, just...
Ah, you!
Just too much of a struggle for him.
The other one's dead, and we've got pet lambs,
and then they can be, um, they can be with another mum and dad.
If one sheep has a baby but it doesn't survive, the journey,
so they get a pet lamb and they can put it to the mother.
You cover the babies... 'Look. Lie down.'
..the babies in the gooey stuff,
and the baby's body, what's dead,
onto the other one, so it doesn't smell like a different one.
It smells like hers.
Her one.
Just one on his own.
It's just a new way of, um, they can get started again.
Just stand back, Jack.
Unfortunately, I think the yow has a strong possibility of dying as well.
She's just had too much of a pull there.
We'll see in the next hour or two.
Come on, breakfast time, kiddy-winkles. OK.
..If you haven't had it. Kiddy-winkles!
MUTTERED CONVERSATION
What could you think is not so good about being on a farm?
Winter. Winter. What's wrong with the winter here?
It freezes up all your pipes and everything,
and it makes the roads slippery. Mm.
So you can't get any feed up.
You don't get out and see many people.
It can be lonely, isn't it? Yeah. You've got to make a special effort.
And say you're going somewhere
and then something goes completely wrong on your farm,
you're like, "I thought we were going to grandma and grandad's."
We had a pet calf, and I fed it at night,
and it was drinking away happily,
nowt wrong with it.
When I went outside in the morning,
laid down dead.
That is horrifying, isn't it? Like... It's the worst thing.
Legs stiff, you can't move it.
I don't like it when you have your own yow
and she dies or her lamb dies.
That isn't very good. Yeah.
Because that's like the start of your flock.
This is the yow that had the bad lambing yesterday morning.
We've tried to mother that lamb on,
but because she'd had so much stress,
we decided it wasn't fair that...
on her or the lamb.
She's still alive, at the minute.
She's drinking and she's eating.
Still not sure about her.
If she does survive, we'll just fitten her up
and she'll go in the fat. She won't stay on this farm.
There's no point keeping her. She's had a bad lambing.
She was geld last year,
so we just cut our losses and she goes in the fat.
Hopefully, if she lives.
It's a battle to succeed at being any sort of farmer,
because when you're farming livestock,
you get this horrible thing that's called deadstock,
when things die for no apparent reason.
And you get the ones that die for a reason and you get the ones
that die because you've put them down because they've been ill.
But every now and again, you come across ones
that just lie down and die, and you can't think why.
I mean, most sheep farmers will tell you
that the main ambition of a sheep,
virtually from day one, is to die.
As soon as... Just to lie down and put all four legs up. Yeah.
The quicker it does it, the happier it seems to be.
And you can throw money at the creatures
and still have no success at all.
So being a success at it is as much down to luck as anything else.
But you do need to have a little bit of, little bit of skill.
An idea about things.
If it were running wild, this one would have died. A year or two ago.
The horns would've grown into its face and it would've killed it.
It would've died of starvation or the maggots would've
got out the flies.
And it's because people have been breeding them
for years and looking after them that...
..they allow this to develop.
It's a bit of moss. It's just to soak the blood up.
So it congeals actually in place on the horn.
If we were at home, we would gather up some cobwebs
and stick that on.
It sort of does the same thing.
THEY SNORT
One of the kids' gimmer hogs is in here.
QUIET MUTTERING No, he's looking at you there.
No, you wish. No, that one. That one there, OK?
So, Jack picked the yow when he bought it.
He bought it himself at Kirkby Stephen. Three years ago?
Yeah, be three years ago.
And he had a tup, sheared him last year at Hawes, was £300 out of it.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
We've got a new classroom today.
So, 9th and 16th? Right. Right.
See you! See you tomorrow night! Mummy!
Mum-m-m-y!
There's six eggs in there. Where? In there.
Oh, lovely. Not for you, though. Six rotten eggs.
No, they're not. No!
Ooh, is it chocolate?
Yes! Caramel! Oh-ho-ho! For Mummy!
Yes. You're just such a thoughtful child.
Whoa!
Cheater!
We've just castrated that one because he's not a good enough,
not good enough to keep as a breeding ram.
Yellow, brown, 103. Lie down.
Behind you.
It's not his, it's not hers. Lie down.
I'll do you a swap.
It's a nice lamb because of where its legs are marked.
Having it white down the front and black down the back is a very...
is ideal for the swale.
Nice black shank there.
Yeah. And the black underneath is ideal.
And the type of hair it's got, it's got quite a short, wiry hair.
And it's... There's no horrible mucky marks,
black marks on its body.
I'll just go and take it back to its mum.
We try to breed the best stock that we can, so that
when we come to sell our stock, it's maybe of a slightly higher
quality or a slightly better type, so that people want to buy off us.
That's the hope.
We're not trying to compete with the industrial fast finishers
and things, just because we know we couldn't.
We have small numbers which add value to everything that we sell.
Lie down.
So, would you recommend to other children
that they could have a good life
up here, or would you say it's not for everybody?
What would you say to that? Luke?
It's not for everybody, because...
people don't have as much experience as us,
and let's say they went up to the fell now,
and they wouldn't know where anything is.
Sometimes it's not for everyone, but someone might find
their, like, their potential to be a farmer when they don't know...
Like, when I went to rugby,
I didn't know anything and then Toddy said that I've got potential.
So they might be a townie child,
and they might come up here and then they might have really good
potential to be a farmer.
The sheep know where they have to go on the fell because they've
got little bits and they don't wander very far away from our...
Heft. Yeah. Yes.
And...my dad says that
the only way to learn is that you watch.
Yes.
HE CALLS TO THE SHEEP
HE WHISTLES
We'll come back in beginning of July,
and they'll all get gathered up and will get clipped, get shorn.
And then that's sort of them up here
until November for some of the yows.
So, no, that'll be, uh...
Yes, that should be it, hopefully.
When we came to this farm, one of the main things that really
attracted us was the sheep on the fell.
The fact that there was fell sheep,
proper Swaledale sheep that were surviving up there.
And, hopefully, we were just nicely getting them improved when somebody
came and said, "Look, we want to reduce the sheep on the fell.
"He's got to take a third of the sheep off because it's overgrazed."
And, frankly, they came with very little information
and very little proof of what they were saying,
and we just had to take their word for it.
It means that these fields get a lot harder grazed
and have to work a lot harder, so it just adds to the workload.
And they just presume that you're
going to do it for very little money,
which...which they wouldn't.
If you told them how much money we didn't make on here,
and asked them to live on the same, they just wouldn't do it.
They would be in tears on telly somewhere,
begging for money.
You've got all the purple
and different kinds of green,
and there's a, like a lightish colour.
There's a pinky and then there's dark,
and then you have the church which has red windows.
I think I'm going to have my own, like, gallery when I grow up,
because I think I might have a bit of talent.
When I'm not on the farm.
We're quite lucky in the fact that we've got a 15-year farm
business tenancy, which gives us a bit of a secure future.
At the minute, I mean, we're comfortable.
And, really, that's all that we ask for,
as long as we can feed the kids and that sort of thing
and reinvest in the farm. I mean,
we're certainly not saving for retirement or anything like that.
I don't know how we'll get off
later in life,
because, at the minute, there isn't the resources there to
kind of secure our future or our retirement.
It's nice when Tom's about and he's there to give us a hand
and that sort of thing, but, on the other hand, it's also nice to just
work on your own and just get on by yourself and have that freedom of
you only being the one out in the field
and just taking in the scenery and that sort of thing.
So, no, it's nice to work together, but there's also time
just to have by yourself as well.
I was never going to clip sheep. When I was working for other people,
I always said I was never going to do it because it was hard work.
You don't earn enough money on the farm to be able to pay the bills,
so if you can do specific jobs...
for other people who don't want to do it,
it provides us with an extra income,
so that we don't starve to death.
I've been cribbing with Tom for 11 years.
11 seasons.
I did have a full head of hair before he started cribbing with us,
but it's all gone now!
Dad! I've got some bad news for you.
She hasn't been very well. She was on the fell
and, uh, she wasn't very well, so we kept her in.
Then we clipped her, beginning of July,
just so that she could die at home rather than outside.
But, uh, yeah, it was a bit expected. She's about a...
She'll be a four crop yow, so...she's had four lots of lambs.
For living on the fell, it's sort of getting old enough,
but because she was born and bred up there,
I thought she would survive quite happily with the lambs up there,
but she obviously decided she didn't want to.
She's succeeded in her ambitions
of dying.
SHE SHOUTS TO THE SHEEP
We started the first week in June, and half of July we've clipped,
and the other half we've spent in the house because it's been wet.
We've clipped about... Nearly 14,000. Yeah.
Nearly 14,000 between the two of us.
That's with our own sheep as well included. We've got sick now.
We were ready to finish about three weeks ago.
There's no other jobs in agriculture that pays us
like this for the same length of time a day.
It's hard work, but the money is quite good.
More recent years, the price has gone up quite a lot because
there's a lot less people doing it.
People have realised that you're doing more damage to your body
than it's worth, so...
it's become a lot more expensive.
£1.15 a sheep.
With...tups are double.
These sheep here probably won't pay for the clipping.
It's just something that has to be done.
Woohoo!
Very funny!
THEY LAUGH
Everything that we do is for ourselves.
Everything that we improve is our own and it improves ourselves,
whereas, if you work for somebody else, everything that you do,
unless you got a very, very, very good boss,
everything you do is theirs.
And, at the end of the day, if you upset the boss, it's theirs
and you've got to move on. And you've ended up...
You work very hard and improve things for nothing,
because somebody else gets to come in and take over.
Thankfully, Raby Estate still offer some small farms like this.
A lot of other estates, especially more nowadays, including
the councils, would've amalgamated into other farms and maybe
got more money from renting the house out as a holiday cottage.
The local landlord, Lord Barnard, wants to keep the dale alive
with people and keep some of the amenities going, like the school
and things, so when he comes to let farms,
he looks favourably on young people.
Can you put your desk lid down, please?
And, Ryan, get your lids down.
And Luke.
Would any of you like to be a farmer?
And you don't have to be a farmer, you know,
there are other things to do.
You might consider it,
but be aware there are other things to do.
I definitely want to be a farmer because it's a good experience.
You mean you want to be one at the moment?
Yeah, I think I will when I'm older as well.
Having a Suffolk sheep farm,
but not in Suffolk! Right.
Because I like Suffolks, and I think they're very nice.
What attracts you to the Suffolk sheep, then?
I don't know, just my dad has them and I like their ears
and they're quiet.
I might want to be a rare breed farmer.
Like, I've got all rare breed sheep and cows and that.
What else might you do? What else might you consider?
Auctioneer. Why would you want to be an auctioneer?
I've had lots of generations being an auctioneer,
so I'm hopefully going to be another one.
I can see you doing that.
QUIET CONVERSATION
It's supposed to stay dry. It's meant to stay dry
tomorrow and then be wet on Friday.
We've finished our own, finished this for Thomas.
We have one more to bail tomorrow,
a field to bail tomorrow and then, that's it. Finished.
TV IN BACKGROUND
VOICE OF AUCTIONEER
At 260, 260, 260, 260.
AUCTION CONTINUES
No, I love sale days. You get to meet folk and have a bit of chat.
No, it's good. Skiving, it's called, really.
REPEATS: 102, 102, 102, 102.
105, 105, 105.
108, 110.
110, 112, 114, 116.
116, 118, 120.
120, 120, 120.
AUCTION CONTINUES
It's done.
HE WHISTLES AND CALLS
Threes and four crop.
Three and four crop now. Three and four crop.
VOICE OF AUCTIONEER
AUCTION CONTINUES
Hold up, you're pinching a bit there now, Stuart.
There'll be dearer shearings than that.
This is double, isn't it? Yes, it's doubled.
Thank you, Stuart. Thank you.
We're very happy with that, yes.
We're smiling.
It doesn't happen very often.
No. It's good.
AUCTION CONTINUES
BRASS BAND PLAYS
APPLAUSE
Right, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to start presenting the cups.
For the hay, which was a very strong class,
the Trevor Hutchinson Hay Shields, AM Walton.
APPLAUSE
Three stems of any flower, of any annual flower,
Michael Hedley.
Local classes. Aged Tup.
The Farmers Finance Tankard, donated by JS Thomson,
TW Hutchinson.
Local Gimmer Shearling,
the Rough Rigg Cup, donated by Martin and Milly Hill,
TW Hutchinson.
Local Gimmer Lamb, the RI Scott and Sons Cup,
TW Hutchinson.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Local Pair Of Tup Lambs, the Brumwell Cup,
donated D Orton,
TW Hutchinson.
The Westernhope Rose Bowl,
TW Hutchinson.
Local Champion Female,
the Middleton Auction Mart Female Cup,
TW Hutchinson.
Local Champion Sheep,
TW Hutchinson.
APPLAUSE
We've got 14 sheep and we've got ten trophies. Ten trophies.
Yow was Reserve Supreme Champion and she was District Champion,
and we got Male District Champion as well.
We won the tup lambs, the old tups, gimmer shearlings, gimmer lamb.
For our little few sheep, we've done very, very well.
It's just the being involved, you know, and competing.
We don't expect to win anything,
and it's all very nice when you do win something.
We're just in desperate, desperate need of a lot of money,
and that would solve a lot of problems.
We might be able to sort all sorts of things out
if we were just millionaires, but...
That's so we can buy a nice swale tup.
Yeah. Nothing else. Yeah.
HE CONDUCTS AUCTION